Locker vs Luck

So there has obviously been a lot of talk about Locker these past 2 days, and a lot of people seem to want to give up on him already. I have heard the sentiment from multiple posters on here that "Other young QBs have hit the ground running, why can't Locker? He must suck".

After having heard this from a number of people, I thought I would look into just how bad Locker is compared to another young QB that everyone seems to love ... Andrew Luck. Luck is a guy that has gotten all the hype in college, in the draft, and now in the NFL. He must be the ideal rookie QB right? He should be the model with which to compare our young QB (at least that is what some on here and in the media would have you think). So lets look at a comparison.

Now it isn't exactly fair to compare all of Luck's statistics to Locker's since there is such a big disparity in the number of games played. So I did 2 comparisons. The 1st is Locker's 1st 6 starts compared to Luck's first 6 starts (I didn't include the Texans game for Locker because he played 1 drive before getting hurt.) The second is a comparison of both players on the season as a whole, but on a 'per game' average (This would give some advantage to Luck's stats since he will have had more games for his bad games to 'average' out, while Locker's still way pretty heavily on his statistics)

Some things that I won't mention or take into account are noises such as dropped passes, who has the better coaching/team, strength of schedule, etc. This is just a QB vs QB 'what have you done so far in the NFL' comparison.

Comparison #1 (1st 6 NFL starts)

Locker - 8 TDs, 7 ints
Luck - 7 TDs, 7 ints

Locker - 56.6% completions
Luck - 53.6% completions

Locker - 1473 yards
Luck - 1674 yards

Locker - 7.04 yards per attempt
Luck - 6.75 yards per attempt

Locker: 2-4 record
Luck: 3-3 record

Locker - 77.7 QB rating*
Luck - 79.4 QB rating*

*This is an average of the QB rating through the 1st 6 games on a 'per attempt' basis. You can't just average the QB ratings for each game since a game with 100 attempts would have more weight than a game with 20 attempts, and since I don't know the actual equation for QB rating (who does?) and the stats are just listed on a per game basis this was the best I could do. ... It is fairly accurate though. Doing this compared to what ESPN.com had overall, it was off by about 0.4%

Comparison #2 (overall stats on a per game basis, includes all 12 games for Luck)
Locker - 1.33 TD/game, 1.16 int/ game
Luck - 1.42 TD/game, 1.33 int/game

Locker - 245.5 yds/game
Luck - 299 yds/game

Locker - 6.9 yds/att
Luck - 7.1 yds/att

Locker - 56.6% completions
Luck - 55.5% completions

Locker - 77.0 QB rating

Luck - 76.1 QB rating

That is just about every major statistic listed on ESPN.com for a QB, and the numbers are stunningly similar. Really the only category that Luck has a statistically significant edge over Locker is in the passing yards category, but even then when you break it down per attempt, they are again very close.

Point of all this is, lets not over-react to Locker and call him a bust (not all, but many are eluding to it) when a player that the same people want to call great is putting up essentially identical numbers.

Yes Luck is a rookie, but he also has more starts under his belt than Locker. Locker had to split reps with Hass all TC this summer, and got even few reps in TC the last year. He also didn't have a full offseason with coaches that year either due to the lockout.

So while technically Locker has 1 more year of experience, practically it is about the same.

I've been disappointed with Lockers consistency is all. He's been completely irrelevant in the first half of the last two games. Here's his last two game combined numbers:

44/85 (52 C%), 570 P Yards, 2 TDs, 5 INTs = 56.49 QB Rating

In both those games he had garbage time-prevent defense touchdowns (and also have an INT). I want to see Locker go out and impress me for 4 quarters of play, not 2. I was disappointed with him in the HOU game, but I also didn't watch the 2nd half. I still think he CAN be our franchise QB, just want to see progress. He still struggles with accuracy, stares down receivers, and doesn't make any pre-snap adjustments (partially Palmers fault) but also hasn't had a ton of help from his receivers. People who think he's a bust are crazy, he's started what like 6-8 games total in his career? He needs atleast another full year as a starter, if he struggles all of next year... it's time to start thinking about changing things up.

Locker is not a bust (at this point). But Luck is clearly the better QB.

Click to expand...

See I don't think you can say that he clearly is. The stats are nearly identical, Luck has just had more oppurtunities.

The real problem here is that we see every single play from Locker every single week. Most of us just see the few highlights of Luck ... I live in Indy. I get to hear about Luck and see him all the time. He makes the same type of plays Locker does a lot of the time, but they let him throw the ball 50 times a game, so he puts up some good stats by then end of the day and has some good highlights.

Its also easy to overlook the mistakes win you win.

On the flipside, Locker has only played in a handful of games, and he isn't a media favorite so ESPN doesn't praise him all day every day.

Plus we are losing so every mistake is magnified.

Its like VY. People thought he was good his 1st 2 years because the TEAM was winning games ... looking back at his stats now (and knowing how it all ended up) his stats show that he was a pretty sub-par player. But his winning covered that up for a while. (not comparing either QB to Vy, just the situation)

I have no idea who will have the better career, but one is not significantly better than the other at this point.

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